Puttin My Feet in the Dirt Prompt#2 BORING AND BLAND

My Aunt Ketti was boring.

She never said much. She never went anywhere. She always wore the same pink hat when it was cold and the same plastic  red trimmed rain bonnet when it drizzled or it was windy.

When she walked she had a little limp. If she wasn’t careful and her foot dragged even a little she would lurch forward and stumble. She never fell. She’d just straighten up and start walking and you could hear her count 1-2-3.

Then she said, ” lift, down 1-2-3.”

Who has user’s instructions for how to use her own leg?

My Aunt Ketti, that’s who.

 

Aunt Ketti’s house was always neat.

There was no dust on her shelves. The pictures on her walls were portraits of flowers and rivers and her couches and chairs were never out of place. Their pillows were always plumped.

She always had fresh cut flowers in a crystal vase on her dining room table and Jade plants in her windows.

Everything in Aunt Ketti’s house was exactly where you would expect to find magazines or books or her knitting. Her lace doilies were always white and always laid perfectly flat on her table tops. They never puckered and the edges never curled up.

” Don’t mind us ” Aunt Ketti’s house seemed to say. ” There’s nothing to see here and what you will see won’t exactly knock your socks off”.

 

Once when Aunt Ketti and I were playing cards ( Old Maid because those were the card games  adults played with 8 year olds back then ) Aunt Ketti looked down at her hand and when she looked back up at me she was smiling.

But Aunt Ketti’s eyes were still looking down and I heard her say under her breath, ” Oh bother “.

I pretended to look the other way because I was curious about what could bother Aunt Ketti.

When she seemed convinced my attention had wandered away from our card game, Aunt Ketti touched her finger to her eyeball and I saw her push one and then her other eye back up. Now she was looking right at me.

I smiled.

She remembered to blink.

 

Years and years later when Aunt Ketti was very old and I was about the age she had been at our card game when I was eight I was visiting Aunt Ketti.

We had been shopping when we got back she put her things away and went to her chair by the window and she took her knitting out of it’s bag that she kept under the little side table.

She invited me to take a seat and I did.

Just as I made myself comfortable, I saw Aunt Ketti look down at her left hand and whisper to it.

It flexed.

I liked Aunt Ketti and as she was getting on in years I wanted her to know that her little eccentricities didn’t matter too me. In fact, over the years I had come to find them curious and intriguing.

Then I had a brain wave. I thought of a way to bring up Aunt Ketti’s many little quirks.

” My Mom says, ” I told Aunt Ketti ” that it’s really hard for some people to be comfortable in their own skin. She said you seem to have it harder then most.”

Aunt Ketti  looked relieved.  Then she sighed. ” It is Cupcake. Especially when it’s not your own skin to begin with. ”